Bon Voyage, IKEA Boat
It sounds like the vessel is finally leaving us. Plus, Philly Mag readers weigh in on Pete Rose's yucky legacy.
The SS United States in South Philadelphia (photo via Don Robson/Wikimedia/Creative Commons)
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Bon Voyage, IKEA Boat
It’s been a long, long ride for the SS United States, the once-great ocean liner that’s been sitting and sitting and sitting — and rusting and rusting and rusting — outside of the South Philly IKEA for way too long. I think more people know it as the “IKEA Boat” than by its proper title.
There was this plan and that plan for the SS United States. All sorts of lofty ideas of what to do with the ship. There’s been a legal battle between the conservators of the SS United States and the ship’s landlord. In June, I oh-so-controversially declared: “It’s Time to Sink the SS United States.” And, well friends, it sounds like that’s exactly what is going to happen.
According to the Inquirer, Florida’s Okaloosa County is ready to pay $10.1 million to buy the SS United States and get it down to Florida. After that? Yep. They’re going to sink the ship and turn it into an artificial reef for your diving pleasure. The Inquirer reports that there are still some i’s to dot and t’s to cross. But it sounds like it’s time to say bon voyage to the IKEA boat. May she rest in peace.
The Humanity!
If you’re a regular reader of this column, you know I’m not into the whole police blotter thing. You’ve got our friend Steve Keeley at Fox 29 for that.
However. I must make an exception. Because police are asking for your help to identify this woman, who is accused of … wait for it … stealing $800 from a woman in a wheelchair.
Reader Mail: The Real Pete Rose Legacy Problem
Yesterday, I told you about Pete Rose’s real legacy problem, which has nothing to do with gambling. It has to do with sex with teenage (and allegedly pre-teen) girls. I wasn’t exactly sure what the response was going to be like, since the man had just died and a lot of people seem to want him to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
I did get a fair amount of negative reaction to my piece. Almost all of that boiled down to the following argument: Lots of stars do bad things. Which, OK, that’s a really shitty argument. There was also the woman who questioned whether I myself never did anything wrong in my life. In other words, who am I to judge? First of all, no, I never slept with a teenage girl while I was a married father of two in my 30s, as Rose most certainly did. Second, we do need to consider the holistic picture of a person when we’re handing out honors like inclusion in the Hall of Fame. Not just how many hits they got!
But the majority of the response actually landed on my side. And some responses made it clear that there were people out there unaware of Rose’s sexual misdeeds.
Here’s a message that I got from a former Pete Rose fan named Matthew:
Pete Rose is not someone to celebrate. When the only thing that floated around about him was the betting scandal and tax evasion, I was in the camp of forgiving him, because he’s an athlete, who played at the highest level of achievement and did so incredibly. Those mentioned problems aside, Hall of Fame honors go to players of his caliber. However, once those allegations that he had sex with a child came out and he admitted to part of them, very candidly, I was done. He’s a horrible person who shouldn’t receive one more honor. If anything, they should be stripped from him. Anyone that wants to honor that man has lost their entire brain and should donate their body to science immediately.
And here’s former Phillies “Hot Pants Girl” (yes, it was a thing) Arlene Nisson Lassin:
All of a sudden, he is a hero. YUK. If you read his whole history, puhlease NO! Thank you for the reality check for the clueless!
It remains to be seen how the Phillies will handle the Pete Rose death situation at this weekend’s playoff games in South Philly.
By the Numbers
1: Number of Philly-area residents to crack the top 20 in the new Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. And, yes, it’s this guy.
25 percent: Salary increase that resident doctors at Penn Medicine can now look forward to thanks to the new union contract they just accepted. It’s their first union contract and the first union contract of its kind in the entire state. No word on whether the new contract will help solve this problem.
34th: Ranking of Rittenhouse Square’s Sofitel on Conde Nast’s new Best Hotels In the World: Readers’ Choice list. The Sofitel is the only Philadelphia hotel to make the cut. Which is a tad weird considering the hotel competition in Philly. This is also exactly why such things shouldn’t be left to democracy. Sort of like all those lists where the Philly spot that served me this travesty is wrongly named best cheesesteak in Philadelphia.
Local Talent
It might be hard to believe, but this year marks the 40th anniversary of Footloose, the not-particularly-good movie that turned Philly’s own Kevin Bacon from a bit actor into a full-blown 1980s movie star. Well, for some godforsaken reason, tonight’s episode of The Masked Singer, a show I truly cannot believe still exists, will pay tribute to Bacon and Footloose. It appears the show couldn’t manage to get Bacon to make an in-person celebrity appearance, but he did record this little video message that will air during the episode. Now, who is going to explain exactly what Footloose is to the huge chunk of the show’s viewers who haven’t a clue?
